Trillium Chapter Annual Wine Tour 2010

2010 Date and Location TBA

Article: 2009 Annual Scenic Drive and Wine Tour a Sight for Sore Eyes

by Dave Cook, Member at large

After a year’s hiatus, the Scenic Drive and Wine Tour returned with a vengeance! This tour more than made up for the missed mileage and wineries of last year. I put 583 kilometers on my MINI, and we toured to five wineries. Kenn Hale did a great job of planning our routes and finding some interesting wineries to visit. He got us away from the usual Niagara wine tour route.

We started our adventure on Saturday October 3rd at the BMW Durham Dealership. They were kind enough to have coffee and doughnuts ready and waiting for us. From there we cruised along the 401 to Brighton, then headed down Highway #33. Just past Hillier we turned east to our first winery and lunch stop, TheThe luncheon was good and the wines also passed muster. Carrying on down the road we came to Closson Chase Winery, which is owned by Sonia Smits and her husband. After enjoying the ambience of a nice sunny day by the vineyard with a drink, we continued until we found another winery to visit. Sugarbush Vineyards is a “garagiste” winery. According to their website, a garagist is “a passionate winemaker who creates limited production premium wine in a garage-sized winery.” Their motto is “you don’t need a big space to produce great wines.” They were right.

Farther along we came to Huff Estates. This is quite the operation. Along with a winery, they have an inn and an art gallery. They have a well thought-out tasting area, nice patio, and the inn and gallery look very new as well. However, the feeling here seemed to be that the previous wineries we had visited had better product and better prices. Maybe Huff is putting more money into their buildings than their wine.

We then headed into Picton for a downtown stroll, and then it was off to The Waring House Inn for the evening. Up until this point the weather had been very cooperative, especially as the weatherman had been quite negative all week leading up to the weekend. My wife, Cathy, and I checked in and made it to the room dry and in time to settle in and watch a storm pass through in comfort. I guess the weather had to play a little catch up for giving us a beautiful day.

Dinner at the Waring House was very good and they gave us a good breakfast as well. Sunday morning started off wet, but the rain subsided as we stopped at the Glenora Ferry and the Lake on the Mountain. Our tour of the vineyard at Waupoos remained dry so we were able to get some great shots of the property and vines. The winery is situated right on Lake Ontario. They have a great view of the lake and have set up a dock for wine tourers arriving by boat. Lunch was very good, as were the wines. The limestone in the area apparently enhances the flavour of the area wines. 

Overall, this lovely weekend gave us an opportunity to have fun, make new friends, and taste good wine. There is nothing like good food and drink to bring people together—except maybe our BMWs.